Maine Sea to School: From Fish Auction to Lunch Plate

How does seafood get from the water to the school lunch plate? This was the topic of the Maine's Local Food Processing Workgroup "Behind the Supply Chain" webinar series sponsored by the Maine Farm & Sea to Institution Network, the Maine Food Convergence Project, and the Department of Ag Conservation & Forestry. Hear from: Mary Hudson, Director of Fisheries Programs​ and Maine Coast Community Sector Manager of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, Shawn McEwen, CEO and co-founder of Sea Salt Lobster Co, in Kennebunk ME, Leni (lenny) Gronos, Owner and Operator from Graffam Brothers seafood processor in Rockport, ME and Mike Flynn, the School Nutrition Director from RSU 12 in the Sheepscit Valley Region. The webinar was hosted by Alida Peterson,  Associate Program Manager - Food Systems from the Maine Farm and Sea to Institution Network.  

Transcript

Welcome to Farm to School Northeast: A Podcast where we explore the creative ways that local food is getting into school cafeterias and how food system education is playing out in classrooms and school gardens across the northeast. 

Today we have the opportunity to learn about the movement of seafood from the water to the school plate as we hear a panel of speakers that spoke together on March 10, 2026 at Maine's Local Food Processing Workgroup "Behind the Supply Chain" webinar series sponsored by the Maine Farm & Sea to Institution Network, the Maine Food Convergence Project, and the Department of Ag Conservation & Forestry

The Panelists you will hear from are: 

• Mary Hudson, Director of Fisheries Programs​ and Maine Coast Community Sector Manager of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association
• Shawn McEwen, CEO and co-founder of Sea Salt Lobster Co, in Kennebunk ME
• Leni (lenny) Gronos, Owner and Operator from Graffam Brothers seafood processor in Rockport, ME
• and
• Mike Flynn, the School Nutrition Director from RSU 12 in the Sheepscit Valley Region

But before we listen to the panel, we will have a quick talk with Alida Peterson, the Associate Program Manager of Food Systems, Maine Farm and Sea to Institution Network who will introduce the event and frame what we will listen to. 

The panelists you will hear from are Mary Hudson, director of fisheries, programs, and Main Coast Community Sector Manager of the Main Coast Fishermen's Association, Sean McEwen, CEO and co-founder of Sea Salt Lobster Company in Kennebunk, Maine, Lenny Granos, owner and operator from Grafum Brothers Seafood Processor in Rockport, Maine, and Mike Flynn, the school nutrition director from RSU 12 in the Sheepskip Valley region. But before we listen to the panel, we will have a quick talk with Alida Peterson, the Associate Program Manager of Food Systems Main Farm and Sea to Institution Network, who will introduce the event and frame what we will listen to.

So Alida, you were the moderator of this panel. Can you set us up to listen by giving us a short introduction to who was at the event and what the goals of the panel were?

Alida: Yeah, sure. So like you mentioned, this was one event that was part of a webinar series that the local food processing work group put on in response to our members really wanting to hear more about the kind of nitty-gritty behind the scenes, what's happening on the day-to-day with local food processors, aggregators, distributors. And so we wanted to highlight the seafood supply chain because it's quite different than the agricultural supply chain. And so wanting to shine a light on that, demystify some of the processes involved. There's a lot of learning to happen around these different parts of the supply chain. There's a fish auction, which is really different than some of the processes in an agricultural supply chain. And so the goal of this panel was to pull together representatives from across that supply chain to tell a story about what's happening at each link in the chain to help the folks who attend these webinar series who are coming from all different angles, school nutrition and the ag space. So to tell a story that would help demystify and build understanding around seafood for all of those players involved.

Dinah: So Alida, could you tell us how this panel might highlight the goals of farm and sea to school?

Alida: Yes, certainly. So the goals of farm and seed to school, as many of your listeners probably already know, are around getting more local food into the cafeteria, supporting education in the classroom, and then also bringing the community into farm and sea to school. And I think that this panel and the elements in play with sea to school specifically, I think touch on all of those different pillars of farm to school and farm and sea to school. 

So here in the Gulf of Maine, we have a sustainable, abundant supply of fresh seafood and the challenge is how to transport it from the boat to the school cafeteria. And some of those challenges have been addressed by different programs like Fishermen Feeding Mainers, which offers free filets to schools and has been a hugely popular program, although comes with challenges around school, cafeteria staff and kitchen staff having equipment and know-how to work with those filets.

And so what I really liked about this panel is that it was able to get stories of both folks working on that program, but also folks who are working to address some of those challenges by creating more of a value added seafood supply chain that makes it easier for schools like Mike Flynn's to buy Gulf of Maine fish. So Lenny is doing that great processing and makes it so much more accessible for school kitchens to procure and serve fish, which the students are loving.

Dinah: Alida, what do you hope people will take away from listening to this panel?

Alida: I hope that your listeners will have a better understanding of how fish moves from the boat to the tray and has more of an appreciation of the complexities there, but also an understanding of the amazing resources and support organizations and businesses who are all working to make that process more streamlined and easier.

Alida: Time to introduce our panelists. We have Mary Hudson representing the Maine Coast Fishermen's Association and the fish auction that takes place sort of our first step in the supply chain. We have Sean McEwen here with Seasalt, who was a seafood buyer. Lenny with Grafam Brothers, who is a seafood processor who is making these amazing value added fish products that are making their way into cafeterias like Mike Flynn, who is our fourth and final panelist who will speak to how he is incorporating seafood into his menu at RSU 12 schools.

We're going to move through all four of these stages with a presentation from all four panelists starting from the beginning with Mary and moving through to the end with Mike. 

So with that, I'd love to pass it over to you, Mary, to talk to us about what a typical day looks like at the seafood auction from boats landing to product leaving the building and what your role is in facilitating that.

Mary: Great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So yeah, I guess I'll start off with I have a lot of different roles. I'm very entrenched in the groundfish industry. So for those of you don't know, ground fish is cod, haddock, pollock, hake, flounders, fish like that, that are all caught in aggregate. So at the Maincoast Fisherman's Association, I'm Director of Fisheries Programs. That includes running our Fisherman Feeding Mainers program, which I can talk about a little further on. I am the sector manager at the Main Coast community ground fish sector, which I'll go into a little bit. And then I also, as Alida mentioned, am the seller representative at the Portland Fish Exchange.

So I'll start with my role as sector manager. The way that groundfish is managed federally, boats form essentially collectives and hire someone such as myself to manage the sector. So I essentially am helping them with day-to-day operations, regulations, reporting. So sometimes, especially for new boats having to hold their hand because they have to pre-trip no thigh before they go fishing so that they can potentially get selected for an observer. They have to declare correctly in their vessel monitoring system. They have to correctly report their landings after the trip. And the biggest part of that I would say is quota monitoring for every pound of fish that a fisherman lands, they also have to have a pound of quota.

Each permit in the fishery has a certain percentage of the total allowable catch for each stock, but no one permit has enough quota to actually fish as much as they'd like. So there's a trading market. It's kind of an open market system, so I manage their quota. If they need 10,000 more pounds of Gulf of Maine Haddock, I try to shop that around and get them the best price possible.

Alida: So maybe you could talk to us a little bit about what actually happens in the auction itself, how prices are set, who's participating in the bidding?

Mary: Yeah, absolutely. So we have usually around 15 to 18 boats that are actively landing in Portland, landing ground fish in Portland. So they come in, they get offloaded by the auction staff. Everything just gets sorted by species and market category and it gets put into our online auction system. We have buyers from New Jersey to Maine. Again, Sean is on here. He's one of our buyers. And because this is an online auction, most of our buyers are participating remotely. Some of the local Portland buyers will come into the auction room and use our computers there. And some of the from away buyers hire a buyer representative who comes in and will buy for them and also grade the fish. So basically assessing the quality of it. So yeah, the auction starts. We always start off with large pollock, go to medium pollock, small pollock, large cod, et cetera, et cetera, and go through the species that way, always with the largest market category starting off first.

And the listings will be on there by lot sizes. So if you have 10,000 pounds of large pollock on an auction, you're going to see some 300 pound lots, some 600 pound ones, some 900 pounds, et cetera. So the bidding starts. Again, it's all online, so they're just pressing a space bar to enter their bid. Whoever wins that bid then gets to select up to 10 lots that they want to take. And as a seller representative, I am representing the boats on the auction. So I'm deciding whether or not the prices that or the bids that are winning are prices that I want to accept. So I have the option to either accept or deny. If I deny, they still have one more try to get me a better price for the lots that they took. If I deny it a second time, then I'm texting with them and I'm calling them during and after the auction trying to make a deal.

Alida: Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about the Fishermen Feeding Meaners program and how that works and supports the fishermen.

Mary: Yeah, so we came up with the Fisherman Feeding Maiters program during the first year of COVID. When we were during lock down, all the boats were tied up. Obviously with restaurants closed, there was just absolutely no market for fish. So we were trying to figure out a way that we could get the boats going out and get them paid. At the same time, we're seeing, of course, an increase in food insecurity around the state. So we decided to couple those two issues, secure some funding, to be able to give the boats a floor price for the fish. We started off just buying Pollock and Hake because it was mostly our gillnetters and those are the species that they target mostly that we're wanting to go. So yeah, when the prices are low, I'm able to set my floor. That varies day-to-day depending on what the market's doing because I still have to maintain my relationships with the buyers and want to be selling fish.

So yeah, once that hits a certain price, I'll buy it for the program instead. We have local processors in Portland cutting the fish for us and then that gets donated to food banks like Good Shepherd or Wayside Food Programs that obviously those then distribute it further. And then we do our school listings as well.

From the haddock I bought, I distributed maybe six to 7,000 pounds fileted to schools just in February, which we love doing. I like to selfishly think of it as we're creating new markets for the future because the kids really love it and that's something I'm sure Mike can talk to.

Alida: Just a couple more questions. One is around logistics and quality. So we know that fish is a perishable product. How do you manage timing and quality and logistics to move to make sure that fish is staying fresh and moving quickly?

Mary: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of all the way from the boat to when it hits the processor or the buyer. There's certain parts of it that we don't have our hands in as much, but as far as myself and the boats and the auction, the majority of our boats that land in Maine are landing very high quality seafood. They're smaller boats. They're only going out for a day or a couple of days as opposed to some of the bigger boats in Massachusetts. They all have their little different nuances with how they like to ice their fish and how they place them in the hold. Sometimes they're putting them in the hold with layers of ice. Other times they have what we call exactics on the deck and they have their fish in a slurry. It all very much depends on the species, how long that boat's out, a bunch of different factors, whether it's winter or summer, but they're very, very keen on making sure they're icing correctly and handling the fish quickly. They're not on the deck for long, being gentle with them. Once it gets to the exchange, they're re-icing them so the fish comes out of the hold. They're sorting it into totes and then re-icing all of the fish. Ideally, everything that goes on the auction was landed that morning. Sometimes it was the day before. If for some reason there's a longer delay, like someone comes in on Friday, we don't have Friday auctions, they have to wait for Monday. They usually will be re-icing over the weekend and tarping the fish as well.

For the FFM program, we just freeze everything. I tried in the beginning to do fresh unfrozen fish distributions and just logistics of getting it particularly to schools was pretty much near impossible, but getting the order out, getting the orders in and then having people come pick up in time. So frozen is an easier way for us to go on the donation side.

Alida: That might be a good transition to move on to one of our buyers who's here. I'm going to turn it over to Sean with Seasalt to talk about their process. What happens once the fish is purchased at auction?

Sean: Hi guys. So I own Seasalt Lobster in Saco, Maine. We are a distributor of live fresh and frozen seafood both domestically and internationally. We have a presence at the PFE where we purchase groundfish and work with Mary on that. I am lucky enough to have a built-in fishmonger that works for me, who's about 40 years in the industry. So Chuck McNeill, who I work with, does the day-to-day purchasing of groundfish and we cut fish, we distribute wholefish, and I would say 80% of that is done domestically, although we do export a little bit. And we also work with Lenny who's on this call. We cut some dabs or flounder and send them to Lenny, and then they're processed into fish sticks for the school districts. So we're happy with that partnership and working with Mary and the Main Coast Fishermen's Association and the rest of those folks, Susan as well.

Alida: I've got some questions, Sean. So one is we hear that you purchase from the Fish Exchange in Portland. Are there other sources that you purchase from?

Sean: We do. Yeah. We purchased a little bit in New Bedford as well as Gloucester. And I don't know if you wanted this conversation to be specific about groundfish, but we are also obviously heavy in lobster purchasing and other species as well. We have nine full-time clam diggers, for example, that dig steamer clams locally for us and they bring their harvest to our facility every day.

We like the PFE because it, one, it's local. So logistics is a big part of what we do and having the PFE in our backyard and knowing Chuck's really good about knowing what the quality is probably going to look like from certain boats. And the tricky parts, while there's about a hundred are, as Mary said, the landings on certain species can increase dramatically at certain times of the year, but that doesn't necessarily align with what's happening in the world. So you're asking people to eat large amounts of fish when it's snowing. It's a rainy Tuesday in Toledo, Ohio. No one's eating a ton of fish where you want them to. So we try to purchase double what we have sold. So we usually like to have 50% of it sold ahead of time and then we'll double down on the rest and that's where the gambling starts.

Alida: Yeah. And what do you do if you're in that situation? You've got a bunch of seafood that you're trying to find a market for. What are some of your go- to strategies for selling that?

Sean: So it's a smile and dial approach. We rely on our relationships with our current customers, whether they be lobster customers or just straight fish customers. And we work with them on the price. When you are in a situation where you've purchased too much, that's where the relationships with your buyers comes in really handy and you're going essentially at that point on an open ticket. So you're asking them to be fair with you, but you're sending them way more than they want. So it can be challenging.

And then the second part of that is depending on who's cutting the fish at our location, these fish species, you need to be very well trained to cut these fish. And because we're working on such tight margins, yield is everything. So if you have a cutter that's extremely good and then you are training someone and they leave three points of percentage points on the table, that could be the whole deal. You've just worked for free. So yield has a lot to do with it.

Alida: What are some other challenges of the thousand that you said?

Sean: Oh yeah, broken trucks, missed flights. Yeah, there's a lot of logistical issues with our business and being here in New England where you have done what you can to purchase the fish, to pack the fish, to cut the fish, to drive the fish to Boston or New York and then the flight gets bounced or delayed and then you're unpacking that, reprocessing it so that can be quite challenging. Or you feel like the quality is really good, but the customer may on their end not be happy with the quality or they may have bought too much. So then you get pushback and that's where credits come into play, where they're cutting your bill and you're kind of working backwards at that point. It's not any easier in lobster. It's actually way harder. So fish was actually refreshing for us to deal with. Live lobster is a whole other set of challenges that we do on a daily basis.

When you're a lobster dealer, you have relationships with individual boats, docks, wharfs, places. A wharf or a dock or a co-op would be a place where a harvester needs bait and fuel to be supplied with bait and fuel. And when they land at that dock, a dealer like myself will pick up the catch for the day. 

Alida: How many on your team at Seasalt?

Sean: 23.

Alida: Oh my. Okay. Yep. Are they all based in Maine?

Sean:  They are all based in Maine. We have two crews one during the day and then we have a crew that starts at night around six. So during the day there are, I guess about four different components. The first on being purchasing and getting everything ready for a noon truck that we run to Boston that goes to the airport and to the other transfer stations in Boston. And then we have a truck that runs directly to New York around two o'clock in the afternoon. And then at three and four in the afternoon, we do a direct UPS and FedEx program for some direct to consumer, but mostly small restaurant chains, folks outside the country that want high quality seafood.

Alida: Yeah. That is so interesting and so different than the ag space, all this air shipment. Super interesting.

Sean: Well, it's got to go, right?

Alida:  Yeah. It's a highly perishable product. Thank you, Sean, for shedding some light on your portion of the supply chain. I'm going to turn it over to Lenny. Lenny, if you want to share a little bit about your operation and if you're able to pick it up from where you pick up from Sean, that would be great.

Lenny: So as you know, I'm Lenny. I've been in the seafood industry for almost 50 years. My family fished for lobster on Cree Haven for many years. Some of us built boats, but most of us worked in the family fishing supply company that was called Rockland Boat for many years, almost a hundred. We sold Rockland Boat to Hamilton Marin when my daughter started to be born so I could be a little bit more available was a dad and I left Hamilton's after a few years to retire and be a stay at home dad. Then my wife's uncle passed away unexpectedly and was asked to come and join Grafam Brothers and she is the third generation of Graffams to run Graffam Brothers.

We've been at it now 80 years as a total. We ship seafood across the country daily and have become known for the products that we make from that seafood, mostly chowders crab cakes and fish cakes, which is how we got into this current project with Maine Coast Fishman Association, full plates, full potential program. The partnership has been what's made this whole program work. So one of the questions you had asked me, what is a typical day for me here? And this is kind of what happens here. This morning, I come in early and start lining up the request for samplings, set up product production, and then see who calls out for the day, which is a challenge here. So I started off, I ended up making all the breakfast for the warmers out in the market and then the cook called out for the catering division, so I went over and made catering for 30 Rotarians for lunchtime today. And this afternoon after this, I'll go restock coolers and fish cases and then spend the rest of the afternoon doing orders to processors and different places for that. So it can be a very busy day.

So what we have been doing lately for this program is we have been doing taste testings in various schools every month. Susan from Maine Coast and myself and Catherine have been traveled around the state with the fish tots. What this product is, is I build it as a tater tot with fish in it and the kids have been awesome about all of that. I really did not think that this would be a product that was going to take off quite as big as it has become. The schools have been fantastic to deal with. Some of them have culinary programs and they've made different sauces and tested them and had little contests.

The kids themselves, I think we've run out of samples at just about every testing we've had. After the kids have tried the tauts, they get to vote on a big board. They vote, they liked it, they loved it, or it wasn't for me. I believe Susan can confirm we have about an 80% approval rating, which really shocked me on that. And they've been really enthusiastic and so is the school staff. They keep trying, they'll go around to the tables and ask the kids if they tried it. And if they haven't tried it, they've been very encouraging to say, "Just give it a try. Come on up and try it. If you don't like it, that's okay." And I have a blast doing it. I have to say that. Susan and I had a very good time doing that. So for the product, as you know, the product is we're using the dabs, the flounder, that Sean spoke about and that starts at the auction.

Seasalt will filet that for us and freeze it, which is great because it means we have some time to work with it before we have to use it. Our truck goes down and picks it up and I'll cover towards the end of this a little bit, what we do with that. Some of the logistical challenges we have with this, labor, of course, is a big problem.Finding small scale processing equipment. We are currently trying to find something that can form the fish cakes for us. Currently, we're doing them by hand. We're trying a couple of machines. We're going to have to try some others to see what we can find that will actually work to get the product the way we like it. We have some other stuff coming that I think will speed up the process a lot because that's right now the handicap we're facing is we can't make it enough to meet the demand that we're facing right now.

Getting distributors for the product initially we hit a lot of resistance and hesitation on the product, but the tastings in the schools have driven up the schools to request it from the distributors, but the time it's taking to get into those is interesting that each distributor has different requirements and different forms and different ... So each one is having to be handled individually. So to that, we've pretty much gone to self-distribution to start with here, just doing it ourselves just to get the product to the schools. I may not have mentioned this product is specifically targeted for schools and institutions, those that are making use of the local food fund so that we'll probably move on to a retail version later on because there has become a demand for this. We've been very fortunate that we've had some very, very good publicity for this program. There was an amazing article by Penn Bay Pilot a few weeks ago when we did our Camden Hills tasting.

And I'd like to add something on that is that through all this, and I was up to the ag show in Augusta a number of weeks ago, it was a great chart of showing which schools are taking part in these programs and my own area was a giant void. Nobody was using any of the programs. So we've come back and now a lot of them are starting to investigate how they can make use of it. They've gotten some monkfish in I know at Camden Hills. They're looking at why they haven't been using the local food fund. So all kinds of fun things like that.

Alida: Lenny, can I ask what is it specifically about working with schools that has made it a positive experience compared to other buyers?

Lenny: I really thought it was going to be a hard sell truthfully, but all of the food directors, buyers, cafeteria managers and representatives have just been so positive about it all. And then we've had the different agencies and programs that are out there trying to get food in schools that have come and joined us at the tastings and some of them have never met each other and then they start working together. So there's been a lot of increased networking that I have seen just happening because it seemed like there was a lot of different moving parts out there that weren't quite hooking up and now they seem to be gathering together, which I think is great because it'd be more of a focused effort.

Susan: Sorry, this is Susan. I just want to chime in and first of all, just say this has been such a fun partnership. Yesterday we had one of the Maine Health Healthy Eating active living coordinators join the sampling also. So that aspect is being worked into this too, which is kind of new and fun. We're looking at some ideas to market seafood to school athletes and highlight the nutritional benefits and work with the main health team on that. So as Lenny said, this project has just taken on all these different directions that we didn't even anticipate.

Lenny: It has been. It's been just as part of what keeps the energy up as well. The institutions, all the schools seem to understand what we're trying to do and have been very supportive about it. You want to know how the seafood actually moves through our part of the system and your questions there. I think I covered that, but sea salt gets it in and then we get it from sea salt and then we turn it into the tots. What we do here for our production on that is we actually start out with main potatoes. We set out to make a mostly main product and I believe the fish cakes and tots come in 92% main-made

So we have this marvelous machine that we got through the program for peeling potatoes. I did 70 pounds of potatoes in nine minutes the other day, which was awesome. So we peel those up, we get them all cooked up and we mash those into a nice, try to leave it some texture to it so it's not just a plain mashed potato, but it's got some bite to it. We take the flounder and the dabs and steam them and flake them apart into that mix. And I did want to mention I learned through Gulf of Maine Research when I was down there for one of the meetings that the flounder and the dads were using, we're only catching 25% of what we're allowed to catch as an underutilized species, which is why Susan had suggested we look at this species. So there's a lot more we can do with it and bring it in. After all we do that, we add carrots, steam carrots, lemon juice, spices and eggs and then we let all that set for a little bit till it sets up and then we just make it into fish tots and fish cakes and they get breaded and then frozen in IQF, individual quality frozen, and then bagged up and boxed and delivered out.

We are having trouble with freezer space because the freezer I had the thought would last us for several years. It has not. It is going to be maxed it out. So we're working on getting a bigger freezer so we can build some stock up in advance rather than try to make it to order.

Alida: Yeah. Part of meeting that demand.

Lenny: It is.

Alida: We have a question coming in through the chat here and maybe Lenny or Susan, you could address this question about how you decide what kind of value added product will be a success for food service directors if you want to take that one on.

Lenny: In this case, Susan Maincoast Fishman came to us because we already make a fish cake. This is a little different, but a fishcake is a very versatile product and freezes very well, can be heated up very quickly and cooked. And my case on other products is we have this fish, what is it going to taste good in that we can freeze and store and hold until it sells. So chowder is a good one, but a lot of people make chowder. There's chowder in the market all over the place. So it is also what's being missing out of the market.

Alida: Susan, I'm seeing you come off mute. Do you want to add anything to that?

Susan: Yeah. So we did do, just to answer your question about how we decide the product too, in addition to shelf stability and the species that we're trying to develop a market for, we did some surveys of school nutrition staff. Mike was one of the people who helped guide the product development and we worked with four partner school districts through our full plates grant who were our product development partner districts. So we did sampling with their staff and students, tweaked the recipe a little, sampled again, tweaked the recipe a little and also the survey that we sent out collected information on how you would serve it and what the size ought to be, what the components for the meal pattern requirements ought to be. So we did a fair amount of outreach to school directors and sampling with students to get the product where we want it to be.

Alida: I am going to turn it over to Mike, our last panelist. Lenny, thank you so much for painting the picture of your part of the process. Mike, if you want to introduce yourself.

Mike: Hi, everyone. Really glad to be here. Really excited about this project. Thanks, Mary, for starting it off. It's been a pleasure working with you through the few years we've been doing this. Sean, great to meet you. I have a lot of passion for those folks that you work with. The first 10 years of my culinary career was sterning on a lobster boat before the restaurant opened. So I've hopefully done a good job, maybe got some lobsters to you over the years. So now I'm at my 40th year in kitchens 15 years ago. Alida, we could probably start those slides to help me share at least the school approach for a chef. Again, 40 years in kitchens, the last 15 I've been working with child nutrition.

So here's a little snapshot of how we think, particularly with the seafood project. And hopefully these slides will share with you how we acquire the ingredients, our strategies marketing to the students. Will they eat it? Does it minimize waste? That's the big battle in schools. The kids may take it and place it on their tray, but us chefs will go check the trash can to see that's our survey, our immediate information and it's been working well and I hope these slides share that with you. And then our production storing, we use a classic brigade approach for ... And this story a little bit is about before we met Lenny, before we met Susan and what's now an even more efficient way, which is a value added product for us. 

So for schools, 2010 I started. For me, it was about the partnerships from those that control my day, which are the superintendent, the board of directors. Do we have a good wellness plan in place for the district? And if all of that is happening, as a chef, things can happen in the lunchroom for us because our hands are relatively tied as a district if those folks aren't involved. And then the second component here is our child nutrition programs in Maine and Alida’s office with the school network, the Farm to Sea network. We've been expanding programs together like the harvest of the month, which now protein is it next month, Susan? And you can jump in too, please, Susan, if you want to help me facilitate this. School districts wellness plans were adopted, educators and staff are involved. Maine Ag in the classroom is helping us get seafood into lesson plans.

So if folks are involved, it really makes it a lot easier for us in the kitchens to take advantage of these opportunities and getting a better protein on the tray for the kids. I think we all would love to replace the bouncing chicken nugget with Lenny's tater tots, fish tots would be great. So 2018 to present, DOE partnered with the Fishermen's Association. They continued to expand the activities and support kitchen renovations so that we could be better equipped to do the best thing we can, whether it be bringing in Lenny's product or trying to make something because Lenny can't keep up with our demand, which is a good thing, right, Lenny? So in 2021, the local fish was the signature entree. That's a little celebratory moment for RSU 12 is they put fish as one of the signature ingredients, Maine harvested fish on a local food cooking competition.

Gulf of Maine Research Institute partnered with eight districts in New England and we were one of them, Portland Schools, Auburn Schools, Portsmouth, we started doing work with Susan more closely. This is where we are. We're somewhat coastal, almost where Ulna and Whitefield are the closest towns to the coast, but when we started this seafood project, we weren't really consuming much. The largest menued item was a USDA supplied pollock, fish stick, which is still being offered, but I think it's an Alaskan pollock. So it's traveled quite far to get to us, but now we're doing more of our own production and leaning on Lenny moving forward. So here's myth two. Is fish difficult to prepare? Once you're comfortable with a raw product in school nutrition and/or any childcare operation, I see there's one chef with us here today in Waterville area. Please jump on this conversation if you have any questions about production of fish. But here's myself and a co-chef at Whitefield School and we're doing the production for the district's supply for the week and the next slides will show you how we make it happen. So back to a school district building the plan as we're looking at our partnerships and the reason I want to share this is if you can poke at your district that isn't participating, maybe share a little bit of this insight with them is currently our wellness plan that's a district-wide mandate needs us to move forward in this area.

The teachers know this. We have a program called Learning Commons, which is virtually the library where we are partnered with the librarians where they see all the kids throughout the week and Susan, Lenny and I could go in there and share the story with them. And we bring posters from Susan's office about the fishermen that Mary works with closely and we tell their story as well as share with them some tastings and find a way to get their buy-in before we menu it so that it's successful.

The kitchen teams design, the workflow and record system is streamlined when we use this approach. And then of course, our external partnerships are very important for us. Thanks, Alita. Here's kind of a snapshot of how we're getting the fish. Again, Mary's office worked with DOE and full plateful potential to make this happen and so grateful for this, Mary. We can't believe how successful it's been when our price points on the tray has benefited through this program. So here's our school van that Full Plates supplied us with a few years ago through a grant and immediately we started hitting Portland Pier to pick up the fish. 

So again, before we met Lenny, this was our approach and this is still our approach when we acquired the Fisherman Feeding Mainers project, here's 400 pounds that showed up, I think it was 200. So we'll prep in an organized fashion for the school. As you can see on the left, we do step one, kitchen setup, keeping it simple. The recipe is simple for us. We just do a basic crusted fish that seems to be popular for this initial start, I guess. And that recipe is posted on DOE's local food recipe database now. So they've customized it so other districts can borrow that approach. So for us chefs, we do a one-hand wet, one-hand dry and start breading, uniform trays. We do six by six for 36 or something else, but we always make sure a tray is what it is so that when we're pulling it for later use from the freezer, we know exactly what we're doing and hopefully we'll bake it at the same temperature.

And every school and every oven, as other chefs will say, it's a little different. So you want to customize your own approach for your best end result so you don't want to overcook and of course undercook. We realized we were putting the seasonings in the oil and it would drop to the bottom. So now we put it right in the crumb so that it distributes through the filet a little bit better.

We've been yielding three to four portions per pound. Monkfish is about three per pound for our need for schools, which is neat. We've tried that in a few ways with the same recipe. So believe it or not, even the flakier fishes, the monkfish will bread very nicely too, as long as you take the membrane out so it doesn't curl on you. 

How we decorate learning commons area where we were doing some fishermen stew and I think that was harvest of the month was fish and we also celebrated the potato, which was the month before. So what we do at school is we'll put that set up so the kids will start asking questions after breakfast. So it's a litle bit of marketing. We don't give them all the information and then at lunchtime we'll give it all to them so that they keeping them curious before mealtime is perfect. They'll lean in a little bit better for us. We've done a little bit of work with Big Little Labs as well with the kids. They've been doing seaweed growing. The kids are making pico de gallo in this kitchen at Whitefield to match with the baked fish the next day, which was a taco and some braised spinach from peak season, who's our local food supplier. But that's what I have.

Alida: All right, everyone. Well, we are at time. I want to first and foremost, thank our panelists for being here today to share your experiences across the supply chain and seafood. I think there's a lot to learn from and it's certainly, I think in my experience anyway, a black box for people who are mostly in the ag space to get a picture into this auction and flying fish across the country. And so really appreciate all of your time and expertise here today. Thank you everyone else for coming and sharing your questions and ideas. I just dropped into the chat if you want to register for our upcoming webinars, there's a link in there to do that and everyone should go eat their lunch outside, enjoy this beautiful day and we'll catch up soon.